PS4 vs Xbox One: who is the holiday king?

It was the battle of the consoles over the festive season – and it appears that Xbox One is the winner.

According to the latest stats from the NDP group, Microsoft’s latest console outsold the Sony’s PlayStation 4 in December, continuing from the same trend in November.

The software giant didn’t miss its gap to boast, saying that weekly average sales of the Xbox One during these months outpaced Xbox 360 by 50% at the same point in its life cycle.

The console also sold more games than its PlayStation rival over December. The USA is definitely Xbox country.

“After 14 months on the market, cumulative sales of PS4 and Xbox One exceed the Xbox 360 and PS3 cumulative 14 month total by 65%,” NPD said.

NPD also revealed which games sold the most over the course of 2014 in the US – and you will never guess which game ranked number one.

#	Game (physical retail)	Platforms (top-selling first)
1	Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare	360, XBO, PS4, PS3, PC
2	Grand Theft Auto V	XBO, PS4, 360, PS3
3	Madden NFL 15	360, XBO, PS4, PS3
4	Super Smash Bros.	NWU, 3DS
5	NBA 2K15	360, XBO, PS4, PS3, PC
6	Minecraft	360, XBO, PS3, PS4
7	Far Cry 4	PS4, XBO, 360, PS3, PC
8	Just Dance 2015	Wii, 360, NWU, XBO, PS4, PS3
9	Destiny	XBO, 360, PS4, PS3
10	FIFA 15	360, XBO, PS4, PS3, Wii, 3DS, PSV

Just kidding, we all saw that coming.

It’s great to see Minecraft’s staying power, with the open-world blockbuster sticking to the top 10.

Why should you care about these random stats from the USA? Well, even though this has very little to do with us here in South Africa, it does give a good indication of the overall health of the gaming industry.

According to the NPD, physical video game sales stateside showed a rather massive decline of 14% in 2014.

On the flip-side though, hardware sales were up by 20%.

We must note that NPD doesn’t track digital sales (such as purchases made through Steam, Xbox Live and PSN) which will undoubtedly show a much healthier picture.

On the whole, everything included, 2014 showed flat growth (1%) in the US’s physical retail video game world.

I guess now we can call it the Xbox Won?

I’ll see myself out.